The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  Like Johnson, Yarborough had sensitive antennae. He had guessed at his plight. He had to maintain a discreet silence until October 19, for on that date (as Connally well knew) he had scheduled a testimonial dinner of his own in Austin to clear up campaign obligations. Once it was over he began sending out ominous signals. He reminded the White House that he had a record of unwavering devotion to Kennedy. Was he to be snubbed in his home state? If so, he preferred to brood in Washington. He was reassured. On three separate occasions Larry O’Brien phoned him, promising, in his slow resonant voice, that there would be no Presidential slurs. It was the President’s most earnest wish that the Senator be a member of his party, O’Brien said, and he meant it. For Kennedy a trip without Yarborough would be worse than no trip at all. There would be indignation among the Texas liberals, and retribution in the campaign to come.

  However, no one in the White House—and no one in Washington, except the now silent Vice President—could speak for the Governor, and since leaving the capital Connally had been busy spinning his intricate webs. The first silken threads were encountered by Jerry Bruno, the chunky, saddle-nosed advance man for the Democratic National Committee. Bruno landed at the Austin airport late in the evening of October 28 and was instantly greeted by rival delegations, one of them representing Connally and the other Yarborough. Acting on instructions from O’Donnell he made excuses to the Senator’s men. Next day he had lunch with the Governor in Austin’s Forty Acres Club and then flew on to survey the entire route of the forthcoming trip. In six years as a politician’s politician Bruno had been tempered by several Presidential primaries and one general election. Never before had he encountered so many different contact men. The National Committee had a foil in each county, and that should have been enough. But the Governor had fielded a second team, the Senator a third, the Vice President a fourth, and labor—which had its own problems in Texas—a fifth. In his Dallas visits of October 30 and November 1, Bruno learned of one Connally scheme to put Senator Yarborough in his place, the details of which are important because they involve the choice of the site at which the President would speak and, as a consequence, the motorcade route he would follow from the airport to the site.

  Bruno himself preferred the large ballroom in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel. He was disappointed. A women’s organization had reserved it, and the management declined to suggest that the ladies move. The President, Bruno was bluntly told, would have to hire a hall elsewhere. No one had signed up Dallas’ Memorial Auditorium. It had a seating capacity of eleven thousand, but the local hosts argued against it for that very reason; the larger the crowd, they felt, the more cranks there would be. This being Dallas, they weren’t admirers of the President; they were, however, worried about the reputation of their city. That left three choices: the Women’s Building, in the shadow of the Cotton Bowl, and, over on Industrial Boulevard, Market Hall and the Trade Mart. The bottlers association would be convening in Market Hall. They could have been persuaded to move, but Bruno saw no point in annoying them. He preferred the Women’s Building. It was rather drab, but for that very reason, he pointed out, it would attract working people. The hosts were disconsolate. They urged he pick the showy Trade Mart. As Republicans they could be ignored. The Democratic Governor could not be treated so lightly, however, and it developed that the low-ceilinged Women’s Building was unsuitable for one of his schemes. In Dallas and in Austin he wanted two-tiered head tables. The President, the Vice President, and the Governor would sit at the top table. Lesser officials—such as the state’s senior Senator—would be relegated to the lesser table. Yarborough would be low man on the totem pole.

  It was within Bruno’s power to make a final decision on the spot, and later he had to live with the fact that had he insisted on the Women’s Building then the Dallas motorcade would not have passed beneath the Texas School Book Depository. Because he hesitated on November 1, the matter remained unsettled a week later, when the Secret Service advance man, Winston G. Lawson, was ordered to Dallas. The Secret Service regarded the Women’s Building as safer—there were sixteen hidden catwalks in the Trade Mart—but either site was acceptable. The issue was bucked up to the White House, where the policy was still to appease Connally. On November 14 O’Donnell opted for the Trade Mart, though the two-tiered head table was rejected.1 The Governor was content. The ploy would be just as effective in Austin, and there he held an ace in the hole. He planned a reception for the President in the executive mansion. There would be no invitation for Senator Yarborough.

  Thus calculated discourtesies threatened the entire expedition before it had even left Washington. Connally was playing a deep game. It should be added that he was playing it shrewdly. His model, ironically, was John F. Kennedy, who had been pre-empting the nation’s political center for the past three years. The difference was that Kennedy had never attempted to purge anyone, and that the Texas center, as interpreted by the Governor, excluded the very people who had worked for Kennedy in 1960. Echoes of their discontent had begun to reach the President; even as the judicial reception moved toward its lively climax, the White House communications center received a telegram from three San Antonio liberals expressing disappointment over the brevity of his scheduled stop in Bexar County, which had given him his largest Texas majority against Nixon.

  The only city where everything was going smoothly was Houston. At the outset Houston had seemed impossible. The Democratic county chairman was treated as an outcast by all factions. But Bruno’s local advance man from Washington, Marty Underwood, had been toiling like a drudge. For ten days he had been holed up in the historic Rice Hotel, presiding over peace councils, and he had even persuaded the two Spanish-American groups, the LULACS and the Pesos, to rally together under the LULACS banner. Underwood was receiving deft assistance from a zealous local public relations man named Jack J. Valenti, the representative of Congressman Thomas—Thomas, the survivor of four cancer operations, who yearned for retirement but remained on the Hill at the express wish of the President and the Vice President. Elsewhere in the state discontent was pandemic. Some unhappiness was inevitable. A chief executive’s time is limited, and Brownsville, San Benito, Corpus Christi, and Freeport would never understand why he couldn’t spare a few hours for them. Most of the clamor, however, came from Kennedy supporters who had been stung by Connally tactics. They were unaware of Yarborough’s predicament. They merely knew that the President was coming, and that the Texans who would be meeting and feting him were largely Republicans and apostate Democrats. But one fact loomed above all others: half the population of the state was concentrated in six of the state’s 254 counties. In two days of strenuous motorcading Kennedy might greet a million Americans before returning to Sunday’s conference with Henry Cabot Lodge, Monday’s state dinner for Erhard, Tuesday’s legislative breakfast—back, in short, to his splendid captivity.

  It was time to move the judges’ party downstairs. Rocking forward, the President sprang to his feet and crooked a finger; a Marine Corps captain who had entered unobtrusively quietly ordered two men in dress uniforms to carry the Stars and Stripes and the blue and gold Presidential flag to the stairhead. The President moved off in that direction; behind him his three military aides guided everyone to his proper place, Warren first, Goldberg and the Attorney General last. The wives joked about rank, yet when Joanie Douglas tried to hang back, invisible hands thrust her forward; though she herself was conspicuously new, her husband’s appointment to the Court dated from Roosevelt’s second administration.

  That was the only confusion. The aides made everything easy. For ten minutes they had been mingling among the guests, sizing things up, and they blended so gracefully into the social tableau that it was difficult to believe that their campaign ribbons were authentic. Was it true that Ted Clifton (Maj. Gen., USA) had commanded a battalion at Anzio? He was something out of D’Oyly Carte. Had Taz Shepard (Capt., USN) really won a Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism in the Solomons? His face was as seamless as a
midshipman’s. And Godfrey McHugh was the unlikeliest of all. He didn’t even sound like an American. Raised in Paris by a Dun & Bradstreet father, Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh (USAF), better known as God, spoke English with a pronounced French accent.

  Down the Grand Staircase the military aides marched in a glittering rank behind the Commander in Chief, Ted on the right, God front and center, Taz on the left. Approaching the bottom, valor suddenly vanished; they fled like fugitives. It was time for photographs, and douzepers mustn’t appear to be publicity hogs. While they sneaked away, Mr. Justice Burton, too infirm for stairs, got off a hidden elevator and edged into the picture. Simultaneously the first flash bulb exploded. For precisely two minutes Captain Stoughton perspired heavily, holding a super-wide Hasselblad single-reflex 38-mm. lens with a 90-degree angle over the bobbing heads of lobby guests, trying to get the entire Court in one frame. A feminine command ended the blaze of light—Pam Turnure whispered, “Finished!” Half blind, Evelyn Lincoln and her aunt emerged from behind a white marble pillar and stumbled toward the scarlet tunics of the Marine Band as the President turned ceremoniously toward the East Room. In the next instant they were half-deafened. The band struck a martial chord. There were ruffles and flourishes and then, in lively cadence, the crashing strains of an old Scottish air:

  Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!

  Honor’d and bless’d be the evergreen pine!

  Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,

  Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!

  Godfrey McHugh, rigidly at attention, glanced covertly at the President and suppressed a Gallic gesture of impatience. He did wish the Chief would remember to stand still while he was being hailed. God himself was something of a sport; years ago he had water-skied on the Chesapeake Bay with young Jacqueline Bouvier, and she had once called him “gay and impetuous.” Nevertheless he could contain himself for politesse. Kennedy couldn’t. Of all the Presidents Godfrey had served, only this one refused to pause and salute the flag.

  Dum-de-dum. It was over. Already the released chieftain was plunging toward the dense mass in the East Room, where, it developed, the Attorney General’s earlier concern had been unjustified. His instructions had been followed to the letter. The crowd under the gigantic ballroom chandeliers consisted entirely of minor judiciary. They were welcomed, their wives were solicited about this and that, they were left; the President and the First Lady were gently shouldering their way through eager, babbling crowds in the Green Room, the Blue Room, the Red Room. The guests included Sandy Fox, the White House calligrapher, who inscribed invitations; J. Bernard West, the mansion’s chief usher; and Jerry Behn, Head of the White House Secret Service Detail—though Jerry wouldn’t be making the Texas trip; Roy Kellerman, an assistant, was taking his place. Others were even more familiar: Barney Ross, who as an ensign had been shipwrecked behind Japanese lines with Lieutenant (jg) Jack Kennedy in 1943; Chief Marshal Jim McShane, the hero of Oxford, Mississippi; and, to quote Sandy’s list, the Honorable David F. Powers.

  The Honorable Mr. Powers called bringing your wife to the mansion “making points.” All the men present had been permitted to make points, and the girls downstairs were as ebullient as the Court ladies upstairs. If your back was turned toward a door, you could still tell when the President crossed the threshold. The whole room would light up. “He’s beautiful!” cried a Justice Department bride in the Green Room. “They both are,” her husband whispered. They actually were. No one could remember when the First Family had been so radiant. Anxiety arising from Mrs. Kennedy’s long absence disappeared entirely as she swept along in her husband’s wake. Her camellia beauty was exquisite as Dresden, her lovely brown eyes like vast pools. Dean Markham, confronting her, forgot that this was a formal occasion and blurted out, “Hi, Jackie!” Dr. Walsh eyed her professionally and decided she had never looked more fit. Then he leaned toward the President and mentioned seeing young John’s pictures in the new issue of Look. Kennedy, delighted, laughed aloud. The doctor turned to his own wife. “You see?” he murmured. “His whole life is wrapped up in that boy.”

  The President himself had few points to make here. These were the faithful. However, they were his friends; he wanted them to enjoy themselves in his home. Political habit, moreover, was strong. He knew people liked to be noticed and were flattered when their names were remembered. Before Markham, one of the huskiest New Frontiersmen, could present his wife, Kennedy quickly interrupted, “Of course I know Sue,” and he urged Mrs. Kennedy, “Be sure to say hello to Jack McNally’s wife Irene.” She needed little urging. Social skills and political arts weren’t so very different. “She’s so jolly!” she said of Mrs. West when West, using the dexterity of a chief usher, managed to thrust her ahead. It was only a word, yet West knew it meant there would be fewer complaints at home when he toiled late at the mansion. Working the opposite side of the crowd, the President had singled out the new Postmaster General, John A. Gronouski, whose first White House reception this was, and the Secretary of the Treasury. Phyllis and Douglas Dillon told him he was in wonderful form. Dillon added, “This is hello and good-bye. We’re leaving for Japan.” “I know,” Kennedy replied, making a face. “You’re off to Japan—and I’ve got to go to Texas.” He smiled, but added with obvious feeling, “God, how I wish we could change places!”

  A buffet and a punch bowl awaited him in the State Dining Room. He brushed past it, returned to his office, slipped on his spectacles, and pored over foreign cables for an hour. The First Lady lingered a little longer, then went upstairs with her brother-in-law. To him she repeated that she was looking forward to Texas, and to more campaigning later. Presently his wife bounced in. The Attorney General had guests of his own at home, she reminded him, although, of course, she didn’t put it that way. This was the family. There was no protocol here, no titles. It was Jackie, Bobby, and Ethel, and when the President stepped off the old Otis elevator after Bobby’s and Ethel’s departure he was simply Jack, starved for dinner. Everything was quiet. Caroline and John, having spent the afternoon with their grandmother in Georgetown, were back in their twin bedrooms off the north corridor with Maude Shaw, the Kennedys’ British nurse. Jack and Jackie could dine alone, and their few telephone calls were largely restricted to relatives and friends—his sister, Eunice Shriver; his sister Pat’s husband, Peter Lawford; Charlie Bartlett.

  There were no cables here, either. The correspondence was equally familial. A note from Jackie’s mother urged her to enjoy herself, and another letter, from Jackie’s mother-in-law, was in much the same vein. She had been to New York City and had discussed the President’s most recent visit to the city with a variety of people there. She noted that the President had dispensed with the usual police escort, that the public had enthusiastically approved this move.

  The sole interruption that evening was a phone call from Under Secretary of State George Ball. Ball had just returned from a series of European conferences. He had automatically become Acting Secretary the moment he set foot on U.S. soil, and at 9:20 P.M. he reported for duty. Momentarily Jack had to be President again. He ticked off a few matters which might be elusive. Ball promised to keep his eye on them. “Good,” said the President. “I’ll be back from Texas Sunday. Come out to Camp David. Cabot Lodge will be there, and we can go over these things.” Then he hung up and returned to the privacy and peace of the mansion’s second floor.

  Elsewhere the White House was less quiet. Godfrey McHugh had forwarded the Air Force’s weather forecast for Texas, predicting maximum temperatures in the fifties over the next two days. That would be perfect, and on the third floor packing could proceed at full speed. Mrs. Kennedy’s dark little Dominican maid, Provi Parades, was busily folding the blouses and skirts the President had chosen. Provi was being especially attentive, for this would be her mistress’ first trip without her. Starting now, and throughout the campaign, Mrs. Kennedy’s personal secretary would double as maid on the road. Down the corridor, Geo
rge Thomas, Kennedy’s portly Negro valet, was filling two suitcases and a black, brassbound Navy foot locker. George’s last chore was to make sure the shirts in the foot locker would not wrinkle. Afterward there was the inevitable banging of luggage.

  And two floors below, the reception for the judges was continuing. It had turned into a party. After the First Family had left, the Marine Band had moved into the East Room, the Air Force’s Strolling Strings into the lobby; both were playing selections from My Fair Lady and Camelot:

  Don’t let it be forgot

  That once there was a spot

  For one brief shining moment

  That was known as Camelot.…2

  The guests were dancing. On the whole they were a nimble lot, and several leaders exhibited dash and verve. The servants beamed on the swirling skirts, the spinning tailored backs, and, at each deep turning dip, the lithe nyloned legs. This, after all, was what the East Room had been designed for. Its proper name was the East Ballroom, and the Kennedy couples, the young mesomorphs and their elegant ladies, seemed right for it. To them there was nothing unusual about this dance. For them life was at flood tide; the future promised a thousand such evenings. Only after the great darkness had enveloped the mansion would it evoke Byron’s description of another party: